Thrown For A Curve

He’s had Tommy John surgery and taken a liner to the head. But for Jameson Taillon, a cancer diagnosis—and the recovery that followed—was his toughest test.

- Tim Keown

Six weeks is all. Six weeks in Jameson Taillon’s life that somehow felt like both a flash of lightning and an eternity. Six weeks from feeling something foreign in his left testicle to cancer surgery to recovery. Six weeks of panic and isolation and fear and relief. Six weeks. • Taillon is 25 years old, 6-foot-5, sturdy like something that grows from the ground, smart and composed, mature in a way that young men of his station rarely are. He was the second pick of the 2010 draft, the future of the Pirates, eternally destined to be sandwiched between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in baseball’s consciousness. When he has been on the mound—18 big league starts last year, 10 and counting this year—he has shown considerable promise, but something always gets in the way. He missed the 2014 season after Tommy John surgery and 2015 after hernia surgery. Last July he was struck in the head—“my big, hard head”—by a 105 mph come backer..

But nothing compares with the story of those six weeks, which centered on a commando-style mobilization, from trainers and doctors to Taillon’s family. His brother Jordan, a 34-year-old pulmonary ICU physician in Florida, arrived to become the medical interpreter and gatekeeper for their parents and two other siblings.

Jameson is a man of routines, most of them based on the notion that control creates results. One of them involves getting to the ballpark every day as early as possible. “That way,” he says, “the chaos comes to me instead of me walking into the chaos.” The story of those six weeks, told by those who lived it, proves that control has its limits and chaos has a mind of its own.

I. DISCOVERY